Australian Labor Party

Australian Labor Party
The Party for all Australians

Saturday 24 January 2015

It’s Time - The AIM Network

It’s Time - The AIM Network





It’s Time














It’s time for Labor to come out swinging. It’s fine for Tanya
Plibersek to say that Labor needn’t comment on Liberal leadership
tensions because the Liberals are doing it for them. But Labor can’t
just hope that the Liberals will free fall, and allow Labor to coast
into office in 2016 on a wave of anti-Liberal sentiment. The Liberals
may be doing their best to lose the election, but Labor still has to win
it.



With that in mind, it’s time Labor started pushing a consistent
narrative. And that narrative needs to be reducible to a three word
slogan. Sorry, but there it is. The party machine will come up with
something for the election campaign; how much better to have a shorthand
way of indicating Labor’s holistic approach now, up to and including
the campaign. I for one don’t want to be stuck with ‘moving forward’
ever again.



With this in mind, I’m suggesting a competition to come up with the
best three word slogan for Labor. It could be four words, I suppose. But
no more; it needs to fit on car stickers, banners, coreflutes,
pamphlets etc. Your friendly bloggers and tweeps Vic and Cat Rollison
and I will be the judges. The only prize will be glory – though I’ll buy
you a beer if you’re in Adelaide. The winner and two runners up will be
submitted to the federal executive of the Labor Party.



And now of course I’ve got some suggestions of my own. But none of them is quite right.


‘Labor for a fair go’ (five words.
Oh well) This is an appealing slogan because progressives can see that
the Liberals are only interested in the big end of town, even though a
fair go is supposed to be part of our national ethos. So what’s wrong
with it as a slogan? The problem I see is that Liberals can claim that
their policies are fair – they just mean something different by ‘fair’. For them, it’s not fair
for hardworking taxpayers to have to foot the welfare bill for all
those dole bludgers etc – the lifters and leaners argument. While the
economic narrative remains tied to the neo-liberal surplus = good,
deficit = bad, the Liberals will frame Labor spending on welfare as
waste and extravagance, unfair to working families etc. It isn’t a strong enough slogan to withstand this onslaught.



‘Fight inequality. Vote Labor.’ It
is pleasing to see that the destructive effects of inequality on the
social fabric – to say nothing of its economically dire results for
business and consumers – are becoming part of mainstream liberal/social
democratic political discussion. ‘Will we accept an economy where only a
few of us do spectacularly well?’ President Obama asked in his State of
the Union address. ‘Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that
generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?’
Labor politicians such as Wayne Swan, Andrew Leigh and Jim Chalmers are
now talking about the ways in which inequality flows from the LNP
government’s neo-liberal trickle-down economics and its concomitant
austerity policies. And there will be more of this; the fates of the
minimum wage and penalty rates come to mind. But I think that it’s too
negative as a slogan. The swinging voters that Labor needs to attract
don’t care about inequality as a concept relating to them or anyone
else; they care about things like house prices, wages and inflation.



So how about we make it positive?  ‘Labor for Equality’.
(Three words. Finally.) Many of Labor’s policies, such as those on
education and health, would make society more equal, or at least stop it
from becoming less equal than it is. You can imagine the conservative
response. Socialism! Class War! Lifters and Leaners! Should this matter?
But there’s also the same problem as with using inequality in a slogan:
it’s a concept that doesn’t have a concrete meaning for most voters.



Here’s one from left field. Though you might think ‘right field’ is more appropriate. ‘Conserve Australia. Vote Labor’.
This one appeals to me in some ways (even though it won’t do) because
it draws attention to the wrecking ball policies of the Abbott
government. We need to conserve Medicare. We need to conserve the
minimum wage. We need to conserve affordable higher education. We need
to conserve the ABC. We need to conserve the environment. Many of the
institutions we have developed over the years are under ferocious attack
by the Abbott government. Labor has to promise to save them. This is
not a traditional progressive view point, which usually encompasses
change to existing ways of doing things. But with so much right-wing
‘reform’ going on, maybe Labor should emphasise continuity? This idea
doesn’t work for two reasons. One is that there will have to be some
changes to what is under attack in order to save it. Labor can’t just go
back to what there was before. Its whole narrative has to be about
improvement. The second is that progressives won’t support it, but
neither will conservatives, who would never vote Labor. Even changing
‘conserve’ to ‘protect’ doesn’t fix the problem. Just think of the field
day the LNP would have. ‘We stopped the boats. We protected Australia.’
It doesn’t work. Pity.



How about ‘Stop the Lies. Vote Labor’?
Tempting, given the number of them –budget emergency, unsustainable
Medicare, wages breakout, unstainable welfare system ete etc etc. But
even I can see the problems with that one.



I’d really like to see a Labor slogan that focusses on jobs. ‘Labor means jobs’.
Full employment means higher tax revenue – both income and consumption –
and lower expenditure, in terms of welfare payments in both the short
and long term, to say nothing of the dignity of labour. We already know
that Abbott says his government will now concentrate on jobs and
families – by which he no doubt means ‘freeing up’ the labour market
through some newly resurrected version of Work Choices. We also know
that there are already five unemployed people for every available job.
And this is where things get really tough. A successful slogan has to
encapsulate the Labor narrative. How can a slogan about jobs be
meaningful under current circumstances? It can’t, unless Labor changes
its narrative on debt and deficit. It’s only by being prepared actively
to advocate running a deficit that Labor can create jobs. It’s only if
the economy is re-visualised as a series of cooperative rather than
competing interactions between the public and the private sectors, that
Labor can argue for government stimulus and a deficit budget. And even
if Labor accepted this, what would it take to turn around the public
perception of debt and deficit?



So you can see why the Labor slogan is so elusive. But if you can
crack it, I promise to deliver your gem personally into the hands of
Labor’s National Secretary. Good sloganeering!




Friday 23 January 2015

Are you angry about what the Abbott government is doing to Australia? Then join the Labor party

Are you angry about what the Abbott government is doing to Australia? Then join the Labor party







 

Are you angry about what the Abbott government is doing to Australia? Then join the Labor party







If you want to see a progressive party rule Australia, your only
choice is to join the Labor party and make it more progressive from the
inside



 
‘Join Labor to give Australia the party of the left it deserves. A party
Gough Whitlam would be proud of.’ Photograph: Graeme Fletcher/Getty
Images







If you despise what the Abbott government is doing to Australia, your best shot at ending the carnage is to join the Labor party.
You may vehemently oppose some of their positions – Manus Island
springs to mind – and that is the very reason you should join. The
Greens cannot help you. To lead a nation you must govern it; the Greens
will never win the votes required to hold government.



Since the second world war, all progressive change in Australia has
required Labor – think of Medicare, free education and ensuring the
largest migration program in the world made all feel welcome through
multicultural policies.



But in order to connect with a new audience, and a potential new party base, it’s critical to acknowledge that Labor
governments have made mistakes as well. It was the Hawke and Keating
who ended free tertiary education, that was a huge mistake, as was much
of the privatisation that took place in the 1990s, the sale of public
housing, and the ghastly treatment of refugees.



Advertisement
Now
even Barack Obama, in the wildly capitalist United States, is seeking
to make community colleges free. This provides an opportunity for Labor
to boldly fight for a just Australia where tertiary education does not
leave people with a debt sentence. It’s time for visionary policy, not
governing by bean counting.



Labor must fight for free education, not because it is something nice
to have, but because it is essential to have if we want to live in a
knowledge economy with high wages into the future. The fight will happen
within the party from its left factions. The Labor party’s right has
been growing stronger with the loss of left-leaning members.



People need to participate in party politics to get the parties they
want. Parties are made up of people – if you want a more progressive
Labor party, make it. It can be easily done.



There is a curious cognitive dissonance when it comes to politics in
Australia. A great many people are willing to take to the streets to
protest over free education and the Abbott government’s unfair policies,
but not as many are willing to join the governing party of the left to
ensure it is more progressive – to ensure free education, same sex
marriage, a working wage and a meaningful response to climate change
threats.



Many on the left ignore basic political science and have a loss maximisation strategy. Duverger’s law – the propensity for single member constituencies to form two party systems – and parental socialisation
effects are the institutional and sociological drivers of party
stability. Labor is not going anywhere fast, nor is the Coalition.



Advertisement
The
Greens are not an answer to the ending the Abbott government. Holding
power is a necessary preliminary to ridding the country of Abbott’s
horrid policies, and this is something the Greens cannot attain. Labor
was created by the union movement as a political wing to fight the
Tories.



When the CFMEU or NTEU
give $1m each to the Greens and Labor, they fight over Grayndler and
Melbourne. These are seats that have traditionally gone to Labor. The
scarce resources we have on the left could be better used against the
Liberals, rather than each other, in marginal seats such as Banks or
Brisbane. The Greens do not fight Tories, Labor does. The Greens
presently weaken the capacity of Labor to fight Tories and prevent a
progressive party from holding government.



The words “in solidarity” have been forgotten. The division of the
left is wasteful. Everyone can reasonably accept that the Greens were
formed in critique of capitalism’s exploitation of the environment; for
Labor, it was capitalism’s exploitation of workers. Both parties share
the same concerns, if not intensities of focus. Parties critical of
capitalism fighting each other instead of the capitalist’s party is
proverbially pissing money into the wind. When fighting the limitless
donations the Liberals receive from big business, and the Murdoch press
to boot, this is no laughing matter.



Politics is a choice between the preferable and the outrageous. By
becoming a member of the Labor party, you can help ensure that mistakes
like ending free education don’t occur again.



In 2014 I witnessed NSW Labor fail to make same-sex marriage a
binding issue at national conference. The vote was lost on the floor
narrowly by 72 votes. An additional 1,080 left-leaning members of the
ALP would have made that vote a victory for progressive politics (there
is 1 vote per 15 members on conference floor).



In 2011, 10,000 people walked through Sydney during the Labor
national conference to call for a binding vote, not the current shame of
a conscience vote. If those people were to have joined the party, the
change would have been made. There is a disconnection between the ends
people seek and the means they are willing to achieve such ends.



Australians who believe in progressive politics must realise that a
Labor government is the only option to protect the vulnerable. While I
am highly critical of Labor’s flaws, such as its treatment of refugees,
the party remains the structural barrier that has protected workers’
rights, the environment, welfare, health care, education and every other
social institution the 2014 budget sought to destroy.



If you do not approve of this Abbott government, what are you going
to do about it? Man the barricades! Join Labor to give Australia the
party of the left it deserves: a party stronger both in numbers and
morals. A party Gough Whitlam would be proud of.





Sunday 18 January 2015

How to sell the Economy - The AIM Network

How to sell the Economy - The AIM Network



How to sell the Economy














Beyond all the programs and policies it takes to
the next election, Labor’s biggest challenge will be selling its
economic credentials. While their record in health, education and
foreign affairs is admirable, future policies will always be threatened
when the media and the Coalition ask the question: How will you pay for
it?



Labor’s record of managing the economy from 2007 to 2013 was much
better than most people think and they have every reason to be proud of
what they achieved, particularly when the GFC is factored into that
assessment. Their weakness, however, is public perception. For some
inexplicable reason, the Coalition have been able to convince many that
Labor were economic vandals.



As false as that was, and is, it remains an issue that needs to be addressed.

That means the next federal campaign must be planned in such a way that
any repetition of that scare mongering which will, no doubt, be based on
false premises, can be cast aside with superior economic arguments that
treat it with the contempt that it deserves.



opinionVarious
opinion polls, then and now, suggest that clever politicking by the
Coalition has contributed to a misunderstanding of how successful that
period was for Australia economically. We were the only OECD country not
to experience a recession, yet the perception was one of impending
doom.



When in opposition, Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey demonstrated how easy
it was to attack a government’s credibility in economic matters,
particularly when a compliant media gave them plenty of exposure. It
didn’t seem to matter that their claims, e.g. ‘budget emergency’ and
‘debt and deficit disaster’, were false and misleading.



Mud tends to stick and polling today still shows that the Coalition
is seen to be the better economic manager. This defies the comparative
record of the two and says more about the myth than it does about the
Coalition’s tactics, but, at the moment, the perception and the myth are
one.

As many of us expected, over the past year the government’s own economic
credentials have been put under the microscope and they have been found
wanting. They are failing to produce the results they boasted of in
opposition and failing to reduce the debt and deficit disaster they
claimed was so damaging to the economy. They are now fending off
criticism from nearly every neo-liberal economist in nearly every
mainstream newspaper in the country.



Joe Hockey’s foolish claim that he would deliver a surplus budget in
his first year and each year thereafter has come back to bite him. He is
staring down his worst nightmare. He can cut as much spending as he
likes but he will never deliver a surplus budget without an increase in
revenues.



hockeyIf he was any good at his job in opposition, he would have known that.


Worse still, he cannot see that the major stumbling block to
sustained national growth, higher tax revenues, increased demand and a
positive terms of trade, is unemployment and underemployment.



This is where his problem lies and where the real waste lies. It is a waste to the tune of $4.7 billion per month.
Deficit spending is not the problem. Nor are ballooning health or
education costs. It is the under-utilisation of the available work force
that needs to be addressed.



Deficit spending on value-adding projects is good for the economy.
Eighty-two of the last 100 years of Federation involved deficit
spending, a body of fact that has contributed to where we are today. Are
we burdened by those deficits? Are we cursing our parents and
grandparents for making us the beneficiaries of this debt? I don’t think
so.



This is where Labor needs to concentrate its efforts because when the
public understand this, everything else becomes possible. When a
nation’s workforce is fully or near to fully engaged, healthy GDP growth
is assured. This enables proper funding for health and education. But
to achieve near full employment job creation programs are required and
that will require deficit spending.



bondTo
do this, they need to explain the nature of government debt, the
issuance of bonds and treasury notes, the time frame over which these
issuance’s are dealt with, how the interest is paid and where it comes
from; that buying bonds from government is no different from opening up a
term deposit account at your local bank.



They need to consign the ‘debt and deficit disaster’ to the garbage
bin once and for all. But most importantly, they need to demonstrate in
simple terms how deficit spending creates demand.



They might also take a serious look at tax expenditures like
superannuation concessions and the private health insurance rebate, but
that won’t create employment.



The Coalition will, of course, cry more debt and deficit disaster.
They will demand to see it fully costed. It will be an utterly
hypocritical cry but it will be loud and it will resonate. Labor has to
make its case with vigour and conviction, but most of all, with facts.



They need to show how important deficit spending has been over the
past 100 years and the importance of the workforce in realising a
nation’s potential. The Coalition doesn’t understand this simple
principle, or if it does, it is so beholden to its financial backers
that it ignores it and won’t deliver what is best for the people.



It will only deliver for those who have the money and lobby the hardest.


If Labor could succeed in exposing the deceit that accompanies the
government’s surplus objectives, they could render neo-liberal
conservative governments extinct. To achieve this they need superior
economic minds whose sympathies lie with social cohesion. It doesn’t
involve any policy changes, just a simple explanation of how this system
actually works.



They cannot do it alone.


billEngaging the assistance of people like Bill Mitchell,
Professor of Economics at the University of Newcastle, and director of
the Centre of Full Employment and Equity would give them an enormous
boost. Steven Hail
is another from the University of Adelaide. These are individuals who
can clearly articulate the fallacy of supply side economics.



The sheer simplicity and logic they demonstrate will silence the
pseudo economists within government ranks and embarrass right leaning
media economists into silence. The rest will follow and fall into line.



Those who have blindly followed outdated textbook theories and think
as we did when sovereign economies were based on the gold standard will
be forced to confront the reality that these theories no longer apply
and have, in practice, been seen to fail time and time again. They are
failing now, in Europe, the UK and the USA.



This is also where people like Joe Hockey and conservative think
tanks the Institute of Public Affairs can be made to look so far out
date they are drowning in their own ignorance. The challenge for Labor
is to articulate its credentials convincingly and do it with
authoritative voices in support.